


en passant

by postfixrevolution



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Minor Crimson Flower Route Spoilers, POV Third Person Limited, Pining, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Tragedy, Unrequited Love, but also more violence too, or is it???, sorry about my abuse of parentheses (kinda), tfw you recruit sylvain but not his bf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-19 01:09:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20648738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/postfixrevolution/pseuds/postfixrevolution
Summary: As with every truth Felix tells, he does not meet Sylvain's eye as he speaks it.or: sylvain always manages to dredge up the past in a way that kills him like no other..[ crimson flower route, where felix stays behind with the kingdom and sylvain does not. they've been fated to cross blades for the five years since. ]





	en passant

**Author's Note:**

> [en passant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En_passant) : to retroactively go back to a move that was technically never acted out, capturing a pawn that advances two spaces as if it had paused in the first rank in between.
> 
> .
> 
> inspired by....the actual in-game dialogue sylvain and felix get if u separate them and then make them fight
> 
> and thanks to my lovely friend [jenelle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenelleLucia/pseuds/JenelleLucia) for helping proofread (and also crying with me as i wrote)!! a lot of suffering was overcome to bring this work to life :,)

When they meet again on the battlefield, it is the same way they always had: Sylvain urges his mount in Felix's direction like it is second nature, gravitating toward the sound of clashing metal and battle cries like it is the allegro rhythm to which Sylvain has always orchestrated the rise and fall of his lance. 

This time, however, Sylvain throws a wrench into the gears, watching the infallible metronome of Felix's movements falter in real time. His copper eyes widen in the split second that Sylvain slams his lance against the swordsman's blade. While Sylvain cannot hear it above the suffocating din of battle, Felix's lips fall open with an urgency that makes it look like he had choked suddenly on the words that wanted to make their way out. 

(Shock, Sylvain assumes the words convey. Perhaps betrayal. He selfishly imagines it comes in the form of slack lips trying to remember the shape of his name.)

(He wonders next, after the swordsman has parried his strike and leapt out of reach, if Felix had spoken it during the past five years at all. Sylvain has whispered Felix's more than he cares to admit: in imagined love letters penned in nothing but sighs and the inky darkness of sleepless nights; amidst desperate strokes and greedy gasps for air muffled against his worn, too-thin covers. He has never forgotten the way his chapped lips caress the desperate sound of Felix's name as it stumbles off his tongue.)

As Sylvain's mount trots to an uneasy stop a few paces before his opponent, he dismounts.

He holds his lance defensively as he approaches, waiting for the swordsman to undoubtedly lunge. There is calculation in the molten copper of his eyes, darting from the slope of Sylvain's lance to the soft fabric covering the gaps in his armor that steel and leather do not reach. Not once in his calculating does Felix meet Sylvain's eye.

"Hey, Felix?" Sylvain asks slowly.

The restless flittering of his gaze slows. Copper eyes meet his suspiciously, as if waiting for the lunge that the swordsman is convinced must come next. Sylvain doesn't lunge though, speaking softly and gripping his lance even more so, hoping that his body language speaks just as clearly as his words. "Do you remember when we were kids?" he continues quietly. "And we made that promise... About dying together."

Sylvain doesn't move, and when Felix realizes he is being genuine, his gaze flickers shamefully away. His sword point lowers, ever so slightly, as his stance loosens.

"...I remember," he whispers.

"Well," Sylvain laughs ruefully, "it seems we're about to kill each other."

Felix doesn't have a response, so Sylvain watches him curiously, catalogues the harsh set of his lips and the heavy, unyielding crease of his brow. The silence between them stretches, and Sylvain almost starts to believe that their fighting can end, that they can put their weapons down and return to the monastery _ together_. 

(He will apologize for charging at him so suddenly and throw an arm around his shoulders, close enough to lean his head against Felix's for the first time in years. If he's lucky, the other man will not shrug him off in annoyance, letting Sylvain attempt to wheedle an apology from him for thinking that they could ever pit themselves against each other. They will sheathe their weapons with half smiles and airy laughs and a shared, unspoken knowledge that everything Felix has done, Sylvain has already forgiven.)

(When Felix meets his eye, Sylvain almost feels hopeful.)

When he hears the man's words, his blood turns to ice.

"Sorry, Sylvain." The look in his eyes is repentant, if only for one _ agonizing _second, before Felix raises his sword between them. "You'll die first."

Sylvain opens his mouth to respond, to find _ something _ that can still the flash of Felix's blade, but no words manage form on his leaden tongue. If he notices Sylvain's hesitation, Felix does not acknowledge it. He barrels forward with his blade poised. 

The space meant for Sylvain's next words rings with the shrill crack of sword against silver, and all of his energy is diverted to fend off the barrage of strikes that Felix uses to try and gain ground. Sylvain blocks them off one by one, the longer reach of his lance covering every tight angle that Felix tries to thrust his sword into. 

As the swordsman slashes upward, Sylvain meets his blade with the crossguard of his lance, catching the movement halfway to its precipice and stopping Felix's relentless attacks. He backs away hurriedly, eager to put some space between them once more. (Sylvain ignores the part of him that wanted the exact opposite just moments earlier.) From across their new divide, Felix watches him, copper eyes sharp.

"Felix, _ wait_," Sylvain pleads, drawing his lance point upward, feet shifting into something less threatening. (Something _ defensive_, his mind supplies, unable to forget the snarl that flashed across Felix's face the moment he had lunged forward to attack him. He holds his sword like a cornered animal bares its teeth, tense and poised to strike, and it sets Sylvain on edge.)

"Shut _ up!_" Felix growls. He leaps forward with a renewed urgency, sword aimed at his chest, and Sylvain grunts as he blocks it, forced back into a desperate rhythm of block, parry, and riposte. There is no sign of him letting up, so Sylvain is forced to watch his moves carefully as they dance circles across the battlefield, feet stepping in tandem to the clash of their crossed blades. 

He steps forward into another strike when Sylvain sees it—a splash of familiarity in the ruthless barrage of his attacks. 

Felix begins with his right foot forward and his sword poised at his left hip, advancing on the left before his stance shifts with an abrupt turn of his shoulder, falling into a feint that Sylvain anticipates before it even begins. (It's a feint he has long since memorized during lazy afternoons at the monastery, watching Felix repeat and perfect it against the scarred wooden surface of the training ground dummies.) A wide step to the opposite side, lance arcing back to fill the space his body just left, and Sylvain catches Felix with his copper eyes wide, the tip of the lance tearing a long gash into his side. 

A strangled gasp bursts past his lips as Felix stumbles back, one arm wrapped tight around his torso as he backpedals, swordpoint held defensively before him. The look in his eyes threatens to _ burn _ him, and Sylvain looks away, hazel eyes drawn to the way blood blossoms like a rose against Felix's side, turning the teal fabric of his tunic a bold, inky scarlet. 

Felix forces in a shaky breaths as he glares at Sylvain, each subsequent rush of air crashing into the next with increasing desperation. One hand curls tight around the hilt of his sword, holding to the polished metal like it is his lifeline—like it is the last thing that tethers what remains of the swordsman to the blood-stained battlefield they have made their home. (Because Sylvain knows him, because he has spent years watching him pour eternities into the practiced parry and riposte of his blade, he knows that it _ is._) 

His other hand presses harshly against his side, scarlet-smeared leather trying to bury itself into a tunic that is stained the exact same color. The attempt does little to staunch his profuse bleeding, but the fire that lights his molten copper eyes has never given Felix a reason to face his battles with anything less than his blade sharpened and resolve unshaking, muscles wound tight and features contorted into an almost animalistic snarl. 

Sylvain observes him with his jaw clenched shut, teeth pressed so mercilessly against each other that he wonders if they might shatter. The tip of his lance weeps blood as if the crimson liquid were its own, caressing the polished silver as it crawls down the length of it and drips lazily to the ground. (That blood, just like the blood that paints Felix's side and bared teeth in the brilliant red of the Empire, is fresh.) It fills the air and silence between them with the acrid taste of metal, far in the back of Sylvain's throat.

When Felix pounces again, Sylvain blocks it just in time, pushing the blade aside before sweeping low with his lance, knocking the swordsman off of his feet. The way his head collides against the earth makes them both wince, but Felix shakes it off, hair falling out of his ponytail, and forces Sylvain off balance with a well aimed kick of his own. 

With a forceful cry, Felix tackles a disoriented Sylvain. He aims his sword at Sylvain's throat and the paladin only barely catches it against the shaft of his lance, wincing at the scream of clashing metal in their ears, faces only inches apart. They are close enough for Sylvain to see the pale color of Felix's skin edge toward sickly as he continues to lose blood, how his lips tremble from of how harshly Felix presses them together as he glares, arms shaking with the effort it takes to match Sylvain's strength. 

Desperate to escape, Sylvain presses a knee against the smaller man's wound, the strangled hiss of pain enough to break his concentration and let Sylvain throw him off. Sylvain scrambles up afterward, lance held protectively before him as Felix drags himself up from the ground, digging his sword point into the dirt for support. 

"We don't have to do this, Felix."

Felix gaze snaps up to meet Sylvain's. 

With his hair freed from its usual ponytail, midnight blue framing his ghostly pale face, Sylvain almost feels sixteen and watching Glenn lie dead in a casket again, the man's younger brother (his _ best friend_) squeezing his hand. It is the last time they will ever stand side by side, and the younger boy's grip will be white knuckled and trembling, blunt fingernails gouging a line of identical crescents into the flesh that stretches across the back of Sylvain's hand. 

Even now, Felix's grip trembles. 

(If he focuses on that fact alone, it is easy to pretend (to _wish_) that nothing has changed since that day. Sylvain wants to drown himself in the foggy memory of it—of blurred tears and muffled consolations and the painfully clear memory of Felix's hand so desperately, desolately intertwined with his own.)

"We _ don't_," Felix hisses, inhaling shakily through clenched teeth. "But you chose the wrong side of this war, Sylvain. Maybe _ dying _will finally show you that your actions have consequences."

Agonizingly, Felix drags himself up onto unsteady feet. Hazel eyes have seen enough of his footwork to know that the stance is unbalanced, toes burrowing deep into the dirt and knees misaligned. He rests his center of balance too high up, blade held high just like he holds his chin—defiant to the last. Felix charges, but disarming him is easy. 

Sylvain sweeps the pommel of his lance low to disrupt his footwork, dancing around Felix's downward strike with the elegant arc of his lance across the blank canvas of his back. The bright teal fabric bleeds crimson the second it is torn open, and Felix cries out as he crumbles to his hands and knees, sword scattering far across the uneven ground. 

"_No_," he gasps lowly. His limbs shake from too much blood loss and exhaustion for him to do much else besides carve concurrent valleys into the soil with the tips of his fingers, head bowed and breaths labored. Watching his back blossom bright red makes Sylvain dizzy, vision swimming from the sheer amount of it, so he presses his pommel into the underside of Felix's stomach, flipping him over onto the dusty earth. The cry it forces from him makes Sylvain feel sick.

He looks far from able to pick himself back up, but Sylvain presses a foot against his chest anyway, unwilling to let Felix stand up and prolong their fight. The tip of his lance hovers above Felix's throat, spilling scarlet teardrops onto the pale stretch of his neck. When the younger man swallows, his throat bobs dangerously close to the tip. Sylvain watches the unsteady rise and fall of it instead of meeting his eye. 

When Felix peels a tired arm off of the ground, reaching for the blade, Sylvain stiffens, waiting for the swordsman to bat the tip away, launch them into another messy, furious clash. He doesn't, though, only resting a gloved hand heavily against the flat of Sylvain's lance. It causes the weapon to dip dangerously close to Felix's neck, and Sylvain can't help the panicked urge to push it back up. Felix, exhausted as he is, does not seem to notice. 

(If he does, it changes nothing in the way his head tips back against the ground, neck stretched elegantly before the bloody silver of Sylvain's lance like an altar. In this brief silence between them, Sylvain can almost call such a gesture a peace offering.)

"So this... This is where it ends," Felix murmurs, the leaden weight of his hand heavy against the lance's tip. He follows the length of it, eyes flitting upward until they meet Sylvain's.

"Why didn't you surrender?" he asks lowly. "We _ promised_, Felix."

The scoff that puffs past his lips sounds unchanged as ever. (It doesn't hurt, for just a second, to pretend that everything else between them is the same.)

"Five years has been unkind to you if you think I'd ever surrender, Sylvain."

"I thought it'd be _ different_," Sylvain insists. His lance shakes just as his voice does, eyes squeezing shut to stem the telltale sting of tears. Felix's breath catches as the lance dips low enough to kiss the front of his neck, and Sylvain's eyes fly open at the sound, vision blurred as he lifts the tip away. Against the rich soil, Felix is a splash of alabaster and midnight blue that Sylvain will never forget. "I thought...."

"That what?" Felix challenges him, copper eyes boring into his own. "That a childhood promise could stop a _war?_" 

Felix finishes his thought seamlessly, and Sylvain can't help but wonder if it's because they were thinking the same thing. He can't help his rueful smile.

"Would you believe me if I said yes?"

"Funnily enough, I do," he says. "You always were the more childish of us two," Felix adds, a quiet scoff lifting the tail end of his words. "It seems five years wasn't enough to change that. You're still trying to keep the same promises we made when we were kids."

"Of _ course _ I am," Sylvain blurts, on instinct more than anything. Then, his grip tightens around his lance, aware of exactly where it points and whose blood covers it. He exhales slowly through his nose, brows drawn. "I never wanted to break our promise," he mutters. "You... You're the last person I wanted to lie to, Felix." 

It's a confession, but not the one that has plagued Sylvain since before they even went to war—the one that has haunted every would-be dream he prayed could save him from his own nightmares. Like Felix, he laments, that confession will find its final home unfulfilled and in a grave. "You're the _ only _ person I didn't want to lie to."

As with every truth Felix tells, he does not meet Sylvain's eye as he speaks it. 

"And you're the only promise I regret breaking."

Sylvain's eyes widen as he hears it, a thousand words catching in his throat, but none of them _ right. _ He doesn't know what to say to Felix that isn't splashed across his bloody cheeks in the shape of tear tracks amidst the mess, and Sylvain watches something breathtaking and rueful twist the sides of Felix's lips through a blurry veneer of tears.

"I'm sorry, Sylvain," he breathes, the second apology he has offered in far too short a time. His hand curls tight around the blade of Sylvain's lance, the sharpened silver no doubt slicing easily past the worm leather of his gloves. Sylvain's grip falters, unwilling to let the weapon go but unable to wipe away the tears that force his entire world (the color of copper eyes, lost somewhere in a mess of pale skin and scarlet-stained soil) out of focus. "Bleeding out hurts, so I'll save us both the wait." 

When Sylvain blinks harshly, his vision clears just in time for copper eyes to come strikingly into focus, staring at him with a fondness Sylvain has spent over a decade trying to find. (It's unspeakably cruel that the first time he finds it will undoubtedly be his last.) There's not enough time to memorize it, not enough time to wonder if the ponderous curve of Felix's bloodied lips might have been the beginnings of a smile. 

"Looks like I'll die first."

He screws his eyes shut and lifts his arms up with the last of his energy, grasping blindly at the lance's shaft. Felix sinks down with the point of it, his last breath leaving him as he cleaves the blade gracelessly across his own throat. The lance topples to the ground with its owner, a dead man's name on his lips.

When Sylvain is found long after the battle's end, he is adorned with enough blood to rival the lifeless corpse in his arms.

**Author's Note:**

> come cry about sylvix w me on twitter [@panntherism](https://twitter.com/panntherism) :,)


End file.
